Thanks Anna, I wasn’t really aware of that.

After the initial welcome page, the app asks me to enter some details: my age, height and weight. It wants to know whether I smoke, suffer from diabetes or take medication to lower my blood pressure. Now I’m registered and my body mass index has been calculated. I can choose either a male or a female coach. I opt for “Anna”. She introduces herself with a friendly, smiling emoji and asks for my name. Our chat relationship gets going.

Straight away she starts to put together a daily plan aimed at strengthening my heart and boosting my cardiovascular system. But before I can agree to this course of action, she wants to know my blood pressure. I have no idea. I have to admit to myself and Anna that I’ve not had my blood pressure measured for ages.

She immediately intervenes and suggests that I go to my GP or a pharmacy as soon as possible. I obey and enter my values (150/120) the next day and see in a table that Anna shows me that this corresponds to "grade 3 high blood pressure". She shows me all sorts of graphics, tables and gives me a very sobering insight: “Your heart age is 55, six years older than your actual age.”

I protest that, at 49, I feel healthy, do sport and don’t smoke. Admittedly my job has been quite stressful in recent years. I ask Anna to explain how she reached this result. She does so immediately. It is based on age, sex, BMI, smoking habits, diabetes and systolic blood pressure (measures the pressure when the heart contracts). The last value made my heart age shoot up.

I’m slightly worried now, because Anna doesn’t seem to be an alarmist. I read the scientific documents on high blood pressure that she saved to the media centre in my new app profile. It’s clear that I have to do something. Anna knows what: “Live healthily, get more exercise and, above all, measure your blood pressure regularly.”

She explains that I need to take two measurements a day over a period of at least a week to get a reliable mean value. She advises me to get my own blood pressure monitor – which I do straight away – but also to contact my family doctor. As my blood pressure is far too high, my doctor immediately prescribes medication to lower it. “It’s high time that you took action,” he warns me, and is far more brusque about it than Anna.

I now measure my blood pressure regularly and send the results to my coach using the function in the app. I can’t forget to do so, because Anna requests the results every morning without fail. She praises me when I manage to reduce my blood pressure to a safe level by taking the medication. I’ve really grown fond of the app and have discovered several other interesting tools. I can enter the exercise I do and document my eating habits. Now and again I receive feedback from Anna along with suggestions on areas where there’s room for improvement. The app is fun and also motivating. And I’ve learned something important: Even if you feel fine physically, your health may still be at risk. Identifying the risk is the first step to doing something about it. Thanks Anna, I wasn’t really aware of that.